b023 - Ecological Adaptation Strategy - Harnessing the Power of Plants for Changing Times - Presented by Joseph Simcox

Something so evident yet so ignored by industrial agriculture, why agriculture in the future must use plants that are naturally adapted to their environments.

In our present day world man has become so detached from nature that he imagines that he can grow wheat in parched deserts and oranges in the arctic, and while this is only a partially true statement, the fascination with gene tinkering in the laboratory with apparent obliviousness to natural forces has scientists trying to create “organisms” with super powers. The disciples of such approaches to agriculture preach of corn and rice that will withstand brutal temperatures and drought and supposedly bring humanity to food security when the thermometers pop because of climate change. Curiously, these people so intent on creating “super” plants in the laboratory, don’t seem to observe that such plants already exist in nature!

E.A.S. is such a simple concept that it is almost elementary school logic, yet for all the brilliant scholars around the world, practically no worldwide cohesive effort has been directed to amassing and trialing all the food plants suited to desertic conditions. Joseph Simcox will explain his bio-adaptive approach to creating effective agriculture in the world’s dry lands, and he will lay out a plan to produce food in them in an ecologically relevant and suitable way. His basis lies in the world’s food plant flora, hundreds if not thousands of plant species around the world have been utilized for food in the deserts by indigenous peoples for millennia, now is the time he argues, to take a closer look and put these plants in the spotlight for cultivation and selection.

This talk was presented live at PV1 in March 2014.

Learn more about Joseph Simcox at permaculturevoices.com/b023.